TORONTO -- The commander of Canada's largest Air Force base, who once flew dignitaries around the country, has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of two women Ontario Provincial Police Det. Insp. Chris Nicholas said Monday that Col. Russell Williams, 46, was also charged in the sexual assaults of two other women. Williams was arrested Sunday in Ottawa. The charges left Canada's military in a state of shock. Williams, a 23-year military veteran, was appointed as the base commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton in Trenton, Ontario last July. Trenton is Canada's busiest Air Force base and is providing logistical support for Canada's missions in Haiti and Afghanistan as well as support for the Vancouver Winter Games. Williams is charged with the first-degree murder of Jessica Lloyd, 27, of a Belleville, Ontario, resident whose body was found earlier Monday, and Marie Comeau, a 38-year-old corporal found dead in her Brighton, Ontario, home in November. Authorities said Williams came to the attention of police during a roadside canvas on Feb. 4, six days after Lloyd was deemed missing. Williams is also charged with forcible confinement, breaking and entering and sexual assault after two women were sexually assaulted during two separate home invasions in the Tweed, Ontario area in September of 2009. "We're shocked by the connection that has been made with a leader in our Air Force," Maj. Gen. Yvan Blondin, the direct commander of Williams, said in Trenton. "It obviously is no longer possible for the commander to remain in his position." Blondin said he didn't know him personally but said Williams was an elite pilot and considered a "shining bright star."

Williams was photographed last month with Defense Minister Peter MacKay and Canada's top general during an inspection of a Canadian aircraft that was on its way to support relief efforts in Haiti. Lieutenant-General Andre Deschamps, Canada's Air Force chief, said the Air Force is fully supporting civilian police. He called it a difficult period but said the Air Force would provide support for personnel at Trenton. Dan Dugas, a spokesman for MacKay, called the charges serious but said MacKay will not comment. Police descended on Williams' Ottawa home on Sunday and police cars remained posted there Monday evening. Williams' Defense Department biography said he is married. Williams once served as a Challenger aircraft pilot who transported VIPs. The Air Force declined to say who he flew but the Challenger regularly flies cabinet ministers and the governor general, Canada's ceremonial head of sate. A spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper said he didn't believe Williams flew Harper. Between December 2005 and June 2006, Williams was the commanding officer for Camp Mirage, the secretive Canadian Forces forward logistics base that is not officially acknowledged by the government or military but has been widely reported to be near Dubai. "We are certainly tracking the movements of where this man has been over the past several years and we're continuing with our investigation," Nicholas said. Williams walked into a courthouse in Belleville, Ontario on Monday in hand and leg shackles, wearing a blue prison-issue jumpsuit. The judge imposed a publication ban on other details. He was held in custody and will appear in court by video on Feb. 18.

They both studied economics at the Military Trail campus during the mid-1980s.

They graduated together in 1987, Williams, 46, with a politics and economics degree, Bernardo, 45, with a commerce and economics degree.

Their families both lived along the Scarborough bluffs.

Now police sources tell the Toronto Sun the two were college “pals” who “partied” together and that their relationship is the subject of intense scrutiny by the joint forces team probing the murders of Cpl. Marie-France Comeau and Jessica Lloyd.

While speculative, police are even looking into the possibility Bernardo and Williams may have “competed against each other.” The source would not elaborate on what that meant.

“But we do know that they had spent time together at the University of Toronto Scarborough campus.”

When contacted about the revelation of Bernardo and Williams attending U of T Scarborough at the same time, Commissioner Julian Fantino vowed that when “new aspects come to light, the OPP will investigate.”

“We are committed to ensure that every aspect of this is investigated and looked in to,” Fantino told the Sun Thursday night. “I am very confident thanks to the great co-operation of the OPP, Belleville Police, and military investigators.”

The commissioner said cops want as much information as possible about Williams’ early years.

“We welcome any information members of the public may have on this and encourage them to contact us,” he said.

In an exclusive interview, Bernardo’s father, Ken Bernardo, said his son doesn’t recall Williams.

However, the father wasn’t able to reach his son to ask whether he knew Williams by the last name he used in high school and university, or his stepfather’s last name, Sovka.

“Paul said he might have run into him there but he didn’t know him,” Bernardo said, adding he will ask specifically if his son knew a Russ Sovka when he speaks to him again.

Bernardo said they didn’t discuss the unsolved crimes in the Scarborough area around his son’s crimes or whether Williams may now be suspect in them.

“We don’t talk about the past,” Bernardo said.

Williams, 46, was charged Monday with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of forcible confinement and two counts of break and enter and sexual assault. He’ll be back in court Feb. 18.

When Williams attended U of T Scarborough, about 5,000 students attended the commuter campus. There would have been about 250 students attending classes in each year of the economics and commerce program, a school official estimated.

Women were terrified throughout the Scarborough area surrounding the campus in the 1980s following a series of violent sex attacks that culminated with Toronto Police launching a task force to find the Scarborough rapist.

Bernardo, after he was jailed for the murder of Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, admitted to several of the attacks.

Following Williams’ arrest on Monday, police have vowed to investigate cold cases that intersect with the former CFB Trenton base commander’s life.

At this point there is no suggestion of any criminal connection between Bernardo and Williams or any link between Williams and any other attack.

On Thursday, police searched Williams’ home in Ottawa, the same day several media outlets reported that he led investigators to the body of Jessica Lloyd following his arrest.

According to a search warrant of another suspect’s home before Williams was named the primary suspect and charged, detectives were looking for lingerie, baby blankets and computer data storage devices.

This is the exact shit that Cathy O'Brien and Kay Griggs has been exposing for decades!

Major major major info here!

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

Colonel Russell Williams is a man no one really knew. Russell Williams, then known as Russ Sovka, is shown in a 1982 high school yearbook photo. Charged with murdering two young women, the former commander of Canada's largest air force base was a serious student, a jazz lover and a leader

GREG McARTHUR

From Thursday's Globe and Mail Published on Thursday, Feb. 11, 2010 12:00AM EST

Last updated on Friday, Feb. 12, 2010 3:04AM EST

If there was ever a childhood to prepare someone for the transient existence of an Air Force colonel, Russell Williams lived it - a meandering journey that saw him twice change his last name, and took him from England to barren northeastern Ontario to Canada's most prestigious boys' school.

The former commander of Canada's largest air force base, who was charged by the Ontario Provincial Police this week with murdering two young women and attacking two others in their homes in the middle of the night, was a serious student and masterful trumpet player who gravitated very early on to disciplinary roles. In his final year at Toronto's Upper Canada College in 1982, his peers elected him as one of two prefects in his boarding house.

He has been so many places and done so many things that he is a biographer's worst nightmare: Everyone knows of him, but very few know him. Friends and family who agreed to be interviewed for this story say that, while his past may be complex, it contains no hints about the crimes with which he was charged on Sunday night after a nine-hour police interrogation.

"I've spent my career doing things right, and avoiding things that were wrong. But here, I can't figure out what went wrong," said his stepfather, Jerry Sovka, a nuclear engineer who lives in Aix-en-Provence, France.

Born on March 7, 1963, in the Midlands region of England, young Russell was quickly uprooted for a new life in Chalk River, Ont.

The 800-person village, which is home to Canada's premier nuclear research laboratory, was hiring experts - including Russell's father David Williams, a metallurgist.

David and his wife, Nonie, had another son, Harvey.

The marriage soured and they divorced. But in the remote and frigid Upper Ottawa Valley, Ms. Williams found love again, and married Mr. Sovka, in 1970.

He got a new job with Ontario Hydro, which brought the couple to the Toronto area. They settled in a house near the Scarborough Bluffs, overlooking Lake Ontario. Russell delivered The Globe and Mail and learned piano.

But the home was merely a base: Mr. Sovka's nuclear expertise made him in demand around the globe, and by 1979, the family was in South Korea, where Mr. Sovka was overseeing another reactor project.

For Russell's final two years of high school, while his parents were in Asia, he boarded at UCC - where he went by the name Russ Sovka - and rubbed elbows with the scions of Canada's wealthiest and most prominent business families.

As a prefect, he reported to his house steward, Andrew Saxton, now a Conservative Member of Parliament for North Vancouver.

It's not yet clear when he reverted to the name Williams. Because of the name change, his former peers and UCC teachers contacted by The Globe hadn't yet realized that the uniformed man on the television newscasts was the same teenager who made sure all was quiet in Wedd's boarding house by 10 p.m.

But his appetite for structure and rigidity did not apply to his musical tastes. He played trumpet in the school band, and in the 1982 UCC yearbook, his graduation message was a Louis Armstrong quote: "If you have to ask what Jazz is, you'll never know."

He stood out in the row of gold trumpets in the band; his was the only silver one, said Tom Heintzman, a former class and band mate. "He was very musical," Mr. Heintzman said. "He was very quiet. He wasn't the type you would see out at parties."

His love of music extended into his adult years, and he has an extensive collection.

In the mid-1980s, he studied politics and economics at the University of Toronto's Scarborough satellite - a campus that was haunted by a series of unsolved rapes at that time.

A January, 1983, editorial in the campus newspaper, The Underground, stated: "Last Tuesday, a student was attacked in the parking lot, dragged into the valley and raped. This is the first reported attack ... Something will have to be done to alleviate fears, even if it does cost the College a lot of money."

There have been no suggestions from the Ontario Provincial Police that Col. Williams has been linked in any way to those attacks, but they have said that, given the allegations, they will be tracing his steps over the years.

(Serial killer Paul Bernardo, who was later convicted of killing three schoolgirls in the early 1990s, has admitted to raping at least a dozen women in Scarborough at that time.)

During his undergraduate years, Col. Williams first dabbled with flying. He took lessons at Toronto's Buttonville airport, and after graduating university in the late 1980s, joined the armed forces.

One of his first jobs in the military was instructing pilots in Portage la Prairie, Man. The small town was also where he married his wife, Mary Elizabeth Harriman.

His father, David Williams, is believed to be in the United States. His mother, who split up with Jerry Sovka about a decade ago, is a physiotherapist at a Toronto hospital. His brother, Harvey Williams, is a Bowmanville, Ont. medical doctor.

Wow! The elite angle, name change and Harriman connection is intriguing for sure... and his dad is/was connected to the Chalk River nuclear facility from which an Australian scientist has gone missing.

Ya, ok, the murders ae the subject, yes, but his position, background, name change etc, are smoked.

Also, he has a history not just with the elite, but with boy's schools... and he and his party friends are murderers and serial rapists.

Here's Bernardo's psycho ex - in her Quebec prision - after making her 'deal with the devil':

And here are three of her and Bernardo's victims:

The one on the far left is Homolka's own sister, Tammy.

-------------

Monday July 4, 2005Serial child killer Karla Homolka was released from prison today after serving only 12 years for the rapes and murders of three teenage girls, including her younger sister -- who she offered to her husband as a gift.

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"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Just as the Fabian Brown-Balls bankers and Femme Comp Inc lesbians got Bush and General Shelton (Chairman JCS) out of the way before attempting the coup d'etat on 9/11, they have now got this guy out of the way before attempting an attack during the Vancouver Olympics.

".. the Westboro home of Col. Russell Williams Tuesday with personal items belonging to his wife, Mary Elizabeth Harriman. Williams, who turned himself in to Ottawa police Sunday, is charged with the first-degree murder of two women and the sexual assault of two others .. OPP detectives working on the case against accused sex killer Col. Russell Williams intend to search his three-storey Westboro home later this week with the hopes of seizing digital storage devices, video and camera gear, computer equipment, pornographic images, and DNA linked to the murders of two women and the home-invasion rapes of two other women. While police investigators were at Williams’ home on Edison Avenue Tuesday, they did not search it for evidence.

Instead, they were there to retrieve some personal belongings and the purse belonging to the accused killer’s wife, who has been staying elsewhere since her husband turned himself in to police Sunday at Ottawa police headquarters on Elgin Street.

Williams, who has piloted federal political leaders and recently escorted Defence Minister Peter MacKay around CFB Trenton, where he was the base commander, is charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jessica Lloyd, 27, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 38. He’s also charged in two home-invasion rapes that happened near his Tweed, Ont., waterfront cottage. Police were led to Williams after stopping cars at a roadside checkpoint, which was seeking to match truck snow tires to a unique tread design. He was questioned for hours on Sunday by an OPP behavioural sciences expert. On Monday, police recovered the body of Jessica Lloyd. Also after the police interview, OPP detectives searched Williams’ Tweed cottage, looking for so-called “trophies” linked to the sex crimes. They searched for women’s undergarments, baby blankets and digital computer storage devices as part of their investigation into the attacks against two women, who were bound and raped in their homes, which are within walking distance of Williams’ cottage .. Police say the victims had been bound in their own homes and raped. Detectives searching Williams’ cottage were also looking for plastic ties believed to have been used in the home invasions. Jones said the OPP told him the women’s hands had been bound with plastic ties and their heads were covered. The attacker then took photos of them, said Jones, known locally as the “mayor” of his neighbourhood. Jones was initially a suspect in the home-invasion attacks and police threatened to charge him in relation to the incidents. His home was searched on Oct. 29 and the search warrant, which was viewed by Canwest News Service, outlines a list of items sought by police. According to the warrant, OPP were searching for computer digital storage devices, a black La Senza bra, a purple La Senza bra, thong underwear with the image of a poodle, two baby blankets, pornographic photos and videos, white shoes and plastic ties, among other items."

"A model military man over the course of a 23-year career, Williams enrolled in the Canadian Forces in 1987 after obtaining an economics and political science degree from the University of Toronto. He received his flying wings in 1990, was promoted to major in 1999, and to lieutenant-colonel in 2004. He obtained a Master of Defence Studies from the Royal Military College of Canada and commanded 437 Husky Squadron at Trenton. In 2005-2006, Williams also served as commanding officer of Camp Mirage, the military's ultra-secretive base in the Arabian Gulf that provides forward logistics for the Canadian military operations in Afghanistan. In July 2009, Williams became the base commander at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, the country's busiest airbase, and the same base that has welcomed home the flag-draped caskets of every Canadian soldier killed in Afghanistan. In addition to commanding one of the Canada's most important military bases, the decorated colonel was described as an elite pilot, a "shining bright star" of the military, and had flown the Prime Minister of Canada, Governor General of Canada, and other dignitaries across Canada and overseas in Canadian Forces VIP jets"

Is it possible this Williams has been set-up ? We know this happens often to discredit or ruin irritating individuals threatening the system or even just to accomplish some false flag operation etc. etc...when they need a patsy

Recently an American Senator or Representative discovered some fake bank accounts had been established in his name with questionable deposits. How he discovered this so quickly I have no idea but the story made the mainstream media and this politician thwarted the plan to discredit him.

On the other Williams could be a psychopath. Often these people are incredibly charming. If he is one.....it sure took a long time for him to be found out. It is strange that this kind of psychopath could have hidden so successfully within the military for so many years.

How could this man's arrest be a signal unless his crimes were long known by some nefarious people. Was Williams programmed to committ these crimes ? Williams" crimes do not make sense. I don't understand how his discovery could be a signal unless what he was doing had been known.

Mind you I have read several stories over the years of very high profile Europeans and Americans participating in Satanic practises with sacrifices of children & women. It seems there are a high percentage of pedophiles amongst this aristocracy. The stories have been so bizarre & frughtening I have been reluctant to give them much credit. Now, however, with such incredible evil taking place around the world in a variety of different areas I am no longer so sure that this kind of Satanic worship does not take place amongst those who are callling the shots.

Our Abel Danger agents have evidence that Russell, Desmarais and JP Morgan insiders were involved in the flying events of 9/11 when it appears that they used illegally modified CC-144 Challenger aircraft sold by 412 (Transport) Squadron in Ottawa, in an electronic warfare role during an attempt to overthrow the United States government.

"Col. Russell Williams, a high-ranking Canadian military commander who has met with senior Canadian politicians and been quoted extensively about the war in Afghanistan and the earthquake in Haiti, is facing first-degree murder charges in the deaths of two women from eastern Ontario. Williams, of Tweed, Ont., and the 8 Wing Commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton, was arrested Sunday in Ottawa and has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of Jessica Lloyd, 27, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 38. In addition to the murder charges, Williams faces counts of forcible confinement, breaking and entering, and sexual assault in relation to two home invasions in the Tweed area in September 2009"

"Williams joined the Canadian Forces in 1987 after obtaining a degree in economics and political science from the University of Toronto. He received his pilot's wings in 1990 and was posted to 3 Canadian Forces Flying Training School, Portage la Prairie, Man., where he served for two years as an instructor on the CT-134 Beech Musketeer. In 1992, he was posted to 434 (Combat Support) Squadron in Shearwater, N.S., where he flew the CC-144 Challenger in the electronic warfare/coastal patrol role, according to his official military biography. He was subsequently posted to 412 (Transport) Squadron in Ottawa where he continued to fly the Challenger, this time in a VIP transport role. Promoted to major in November 1999, he was posted to director general military careers where he served as the multi-engine pilot career manager."

'CL-600 - original production version, powered by Avco Lycoming ALF 502L turbofans of 7,500 lbf (33.6 kN) thrust each. Built until 1983 (83 built) CL-600S - 76 CL-600s retrofitted with the winglets introduced on the CL-601-1A. 12 aircraft purchased by Canadian Forces Air Command for use in a variety of roles as the CC-144, CE-144, and CX-144."

"In the 1980s, the Canadian Air Force purchased a number of CL600 Challenger Aircraft for VIP transport and electronic war fare. These aircrafts were certified to the Federal Aviation Regulations (FAR) part 25. Specific CF requirements made it necessary to modify these aircrafts. Among other changes like avionics and wiring, cut-outs were made in the tail cone structure for an infrared sensor, a ram air intake, as well as a chaff dispenser. After the CF decided there was no further need to operate the CL600 Challenger aircraft, three CL600 aircrafts were sold to a private operator who contracted out the removal of the modifications installed by the CF. The contractor was tasked to re-certify these aircrafts to FAR 25. The cut-outs remaining after removal of the tail cone modifications were considered as damage and repair schemes had therefore been developed to re-establish the structural integrity of the original tailcones. Martec Limited was therefore tasked by the contractor to analyze the proposed repair schemes and to modify the repair schemes as required to ensure the structural integrity and durability of the repairs. The tail cone structure consists mainly of Kevlar 49 prepreg material for the skins and Nomex honeycomb of variable thickness for the core material. Local ply-build ups and changes in core thickness are used to account for local loads in the tail cone design. The proposed repair schemes were analyzed and modified as required ensuring the structural integrity of the tailcone structure for the environmental conditions in which the aircraft operates. Technician experience as well as inspection limitations were considered in the repair design and analysis, providing a sufficient margin of safety. The performed analyses were based upon traditional classic lamina analysis theory (CLA), basic engineering methodology, as well as lamina analysis software. The repairs were executed by the contractor and the aircraft has successfully been re-certified to FAR 25."

"[Witness to crash of United 93 on 9/11 Susan Mcelwain: There's no way I imagined this plane - it was so low it was virtually on top of me. It was white with no markings but it was definitely military, it just had that look. "It had two rear engines, a big fin on the back like a spoiler on the back of a car and with two upright fins at the side. I haven't found one like it on the internet. It definitely wasn't one of those executive jets. The FBI came and talked to me and said there was no plane around. "Then they changed their story and tried to say it was a plane taking pictures of the crash 3,000ft up. "But I saw it and it was there before the crash and it was 40 feet above my head. They did not want my story - nobody here did." "

"Today, AeroSat is on the cutting-edge of in-flight connectivity, a market poised for significant growth. Our innovative Ku-band antenna systems enable aircraft to connect to the Internet whether in flight or at the gate, affordably maintaining high-speed broadband connections in every region of the world. More than 300 of our commercial TV antennas have been installed to date, providing service where others can't, due to a weak signal, low-to-horizon positioning, or humid weather conditions. Our goal in the next two years is to become the aviation standard for wireless connectivity, television, cell-phone service, and text messaging. Within three years, we plan to introduce the next generation of airborne communications, delivering even greater connection speed at the lowest cost ever .. we offer a Fuselage-Mounted aircraft television antenna, a Tail-Mounted aircraft television antenna and a TV/Internet Tail-Mounted Antenna. To date, we have shipped more than 300 units .. In addition to our antenna systems, we are developing a next-generation, ground-to-air and inter-aircraft network system called Airborne Internet [Charlotte's Web]. Airborne Internet delivers 45 Mbps service to aircraft at a much lower cost per bit than existing satellite-based solutions. In April 2007, this system underwent a successful test flight with the FAA. It is expected to be commercially available within the next three years .. Today, our airborne SATCOM products are certified and in use on Boeing, Airbus, Gulfstream, Bombardier, Dessault and Cessna aircraft. AeroSat holds ISO 9001:2000 certification, Aerospace Standard (AS9100B) certification, FAA Parts Manufacture Authority (PMA) and is FAA certified on 28 types of aircraft. AeroSat's newest HR6400 Ku-band antenna is DO-160E qualified and flight tested."

More reference can be found at the links below but until you have been assured that airborne security has not been compromised by Colonel Williams' arrest, we suggest you and senior government ministers stay away from the Vancouver Olympic Games.

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately

From the video clip: "Our mission is to assure the continuity of our species. My question: Can I count on you? Can I?"

Is seems the real mission is to maintain the continuity of the Elite Feudal World State through whatever means possible.

These people (elite species) involved are empowered through the various worldwide networked intelligence agencies. This empowerment has lead to its complete corruption. Everybody knows of (and benefits from) the inherent evil nature of the International Bankers Corporations and the UN subsidiary fronts.

What will be telling in this investigation and cover up of Col. Russell Williams crimes is the depth of corruption that this DEEP STATE is involved in.

When our Bestial Overlords occasionally make an appearance, we need to pay close attention.

The Canadian Forces have announced a replacement for Col. Russell Williams as commander of the 8 Wing Trenton military base.

Toronto native Lt.-Col Dave Cochrane will take control of the Ontario base on Feb. 19, when he is officially promoted to the rank of Colonel, said Chief of Air Staff, Lt.-Gen Andre Deschamps in a statement Friday.

Cochrane has a masters degree in defence studies from the Royal Military College. He is married to Sherri Cochrane (nee Smith) of Ottawa. They have a son, 13-year-old Jamie, and a daughter, 12-year-old Lindsay.

"I believe Col. Cochrane has the exceptional leadership qualities necessary to lead 8 Wing Trenton at this challenging and critical time, as the Canadian Forces are experiencing an unprecedented operational tempo," Deschamps said.

"He is a highly experienced, trustworthy and capable commander who is well known in the local community, as are his wife and children. He is a respected member of the air mobility community and has my utmost

confidence."

Cochrane will take over from Lt.-Col. David Murphy, who has served as acting commander since Williams, 46, was arrested in connection the murder of 27-year-old Jessica Lloyd.

Williams was charged Monday with two counts of first-degree murder. He is currently being held at a provincial jail in Napanee, Ont., where it is reported he is on suicide watch. He has been placed in a segregation cell where he can be monitored by staff.

TORONTO -- A book on the air force colonel accused of killing two women and assaulting two others is set for release this fall. Timothy Appleby, a longtime crime reporter and foreign correspondent for the Globe and Mail, is the author of Betrayal in Uniform: The Secret Life of Colonel Russell Williams.

In a release, he says "Williams looked to be everything a career military man should be" and "his shock arrest has left his friends, family, neighbours and the Canadian Armed Forces reeling."

TORONTO, Feb. 11 /CNW/ - Random House Canada announced today that it has acquired BETRAYAL IN UNIFORM: THE SECRET LIFE OF COLONEL RUSSELL WILLIAMS, to be published in late fall of this year. Its author is Timothy Appleby, longtime crime reporter and foreign correspondent for The Globe and Mail. Of the book, Appleby says, "As commander of one the biggest military bases in Canada, Colonel David Russell Williams looked to be everything a career military man should be. His shock arrest has left his friends, family, neighbours and the Canadian armed forces reeling - this respected pilot and base commander stands accused of being a serial killer and sexual attacker/fetishist whose alleged exploits could have been lifted from the darkest pages of pulp fiction."

Anne Collins, Publisher, the Knopf Random Canada Publishing Group, preempted English Canadian rights to the book from Toronto literary agent Helen Heller. Collins says, "Though the charges against the Colonel are not yet proven, the case is riveting and deserves the best possible reporting to bring all its fascinating aspects to life. People can't stop talking about the alleged abuse of his position, the Colonel's ability to lead a double life, the tragic loss of these vital young women: I'm really looking forward to the light Tim Appleby will shed on this deeply chilling case."

Says agent Helen Heller: "Tim Appleby is one of the most respected crime reporters in the country. His sources and his reportage are second to none. I'm thrilled to have been involved in putting this deal together."

Jessica Lloyd was strangled by her killer, according to a source who says the death of the 27-year-old from Belleville was the ultimate crime in a "bizarre escalation" of behaviour.

A second alleged victim of Canadian Forces Air Force Colonel Russell Williams was also asphyxiated, sources familiar with the investigation say. But detectives believe the death of Canadian Forces Corporal Marie-France Comeau, 38, was not intentionally inflicted. "The theory is that she was meant to live."

Col. Williams stands accused of first-degree murder in both cases. He is also charged with two counts of sexual assault stemming from attacks on two women who live close to his Tweed-area cottage.

As well, he is under scrutiny in less severe crimes - starting with the thefts of women's underwear dating back to 2006.

A source said police are probing 48 such cases and have recovered stolen lingerie - neatly stored, catalogued and concealed - in searches of the suspect's Ottawa home.

The investigative theory is that Col. Williams graduated from the years of panty raids to sexual assaults, and then to murder.

In July, he took command of 8 Wing/Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Canada's largest Air Force base. In September, two women were bound with tape and blindfolded by a man they could not identify.

Those attacks took place two months before Col. Williams's subordinate, Cpl. Comeau, was found slain in her home. A source said she had been gagged and blindfolded before the killing.

Ms. Lloyd, who worked for a school-bus company, disappeared on Jan. 29. She had just sent a text message to a friend saying she was safely inside her home in Belleville, a community east of CFB Trenton.

Police were led to her body in the woods near a rural roadway in Tweed, northeast of the army base, after Col Williams's arrest and interrogation this past weekend.

Ms. Lloyd's funeral is to take place this weekend. Col. Williams is being held in the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee.

The "bizarre escalation" theory casts doubt on growing public speculation that the alleged pattern of sex crimes could incorporate decades-old "cold" cases of homicide or sexual assault.

Detectives probing the Eastern Ontario murders have been flooded with calls from Manitoba and Nova Scotia as concerned citizens and police ask whether the ongoing investigation might shed light on old crimes.

During the 1980s, Col. Williams attended high school and university in Toronto. He joined the military and was posted to bases in Western, Eastern, and Central Canada in the 1990s.

Before his arrest he had an unblemished career.

The Ontario Provincial Police say their priority remains gathering evidence on the current cases, and they're not dusting off legacy files just yet.

"Right now, the core investigation is still around the four incidents now before the courts," said OPP Sergeant Kristine Rae.

Police are still scouring those crime scenes, she said. Sgt. Rae acknowledged that police and families of other missing women have been calling.

The OPP will not say whether they have obtained a DNA sample from Col. Williams - although it is likely, given the ongoing searches of his properties.

His genetic code will likely prove an invaluable tool in the investigations, regardless of whether it implicates him in other crimes or clears him of suspicion.

Police can re-examine old crime-scene evidence, such as hair, blood and semen of potential suspects, because biological material can survive for years after a crime takes place.

Samples are sent to forensic scientists who input the code into the "crime scene index," or CSI component, of the national DNA databank, which is run by the RCMP.

The oldest scrap of evidence in the national databank is from 1964 - decades before the forensic science based on genetic code became a reality. The database has DNA evidence from more than 50,000 crime scenes.

"I like to look at the DNA databank as a justice time machine," Ron Fourney, the scientist in charge of the databank, said in an interview. "DNA is often a silent witness."

He said he could not comment on individual cases.

Meanwhile, police are said to be investigating whether there are any ties between Col. Williams and serial killer Paul Bernardo, according to a report Friday in the Toronto Sun which said the two were “pals” during their university years. Police sources have said there is currently no known connection between the two men.

Col. Williams and Mr. Bernardo attended the University of Toronto’s Scarborough campus at the same time, Col. Williams graduated in 1986 and Mr. Bernardo in 1987. Col. Williams studied economics and political science while Mr. Bernardo obtained a BA in business.

Mr. Bernardo, who was later convicted of killing three schoolgirls in the early 1990s, has admitted to raping at least a dozen women in Scarborough at that time.

With reports from Colin Freeze and Greg McArthur

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"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Listening now... it's all still uncomfirmed but Holy Cow! Here's what's on the table:

- Williams was in command of some part of the Canadian airforce on 9/11- He was to be in charge of airborne security for the 2010 Vancouver Olympics- He's picked up for double murder and possibly serial rape one week prior to the start of the Olympics- There's some reference to "snuff films" and even Pickton's British Columbia pig farm of horror... and to Bernardo- Williams, Pickton and Bernardo all had/have the same profile (rape and murder)- His successor is Toronto native Lt.-Col Dave Cochrane

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"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Martin Luther King, Jr.

February 14, 2010 Family of slain woman inquires about Williams link By CBC News

A couple in Deep River, Ont., say they have asked authorities if they are investigating any connections between their daughter's unsolved murder case and Col. Russell Williams, the former commander of Canadian Forces Base Trenton who has been charged in the deaths of two other southern Ontario women.

Margaret McWilliam was found raped and killed at Warden Woods Park in Toronto's Scarborough region on Aug. 27, 1987. McWilliam was a native of Deep River, a community located about two hours' drive northwest of Ottawa.

She was 21 at the time.

Williams, 46, had graduated from University of Toronto's Scarborough campus that year.

He was charged last week with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jessica Lloyd, 27, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 38.

He also faces charges for home invasions and sexual assaults.

Charlotte McWilliam, Margaret's mother, said her first reaction to Williams's arrest was "absolute shock," particularly because he was such a high-profile member of the military.

After that initial reaction, she began thinking of her daughter's cold case.

Her husband Ivan has contacted Toronto police to inquire if they are investigating if there are any connections between Williams and her daughter's death.

An officer at the police force did not offer comment on McWilliam's case, saying he wasn't familiar with it, Charlotte McWilliam said. But the officer said Toronto police would get back to the McWilliam family if they had more information.

"You always think every time something comes into the media ? could this person possibly be the one who was involved [in Margaret's death?]," Charlotte McWilliam told CBC News.

Daughter's death 'a nightmare'Margaret McWilliam moved to Toronto in 1986 after graduating from Kemptville College south of Ottawa. At the time, Williams was attending classes at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.

The area where McWilliam's body was found is also near where Williams lived with his parents as a teenager some eight years earlier.

Charlotte McWilliam acknowledged she was struck by some of those "coincidences," but said she feels there doesn't appear to be "any real connection" between Williams and her daughter's case.

"I try to remember her life, because if one dwells on her death, it's a nightmare. So we have tried to get on with our lives and remember the life that we had with Margaret, not the end of that life," McWilliam added.

The Ontario Provincial Police said they have been receiving calls from other police forces in communities across the country where Williams lived about possibly looking into past cold cases.

However, the OPP said its main focus is on the current deaths and sexual assault cases.

It's not so surprising when one realizes that most serial-killers are (1) created for purposes of black-world statecraft, and (2) do not act alone.

Read the book Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder by David McGowan (Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, Inc., 2004). The book concerns high-level child prostitution, pedophile and snuff-film rings, drug networks, intergenerational occultism, ritualistic human sacrifice, and the organizations behind the phenomena of serial murder. These are intelligence operations used to compromise politicians, businessmen, academics, media personalities, etc.; used for assassination; and used to create a more totalitarian society by inducing societal fear via mayhem. It's thoroughly documented with major-media news articles and government records. The book is definitely one of the most important works ever written in terms of understanding the world we live in.

It's not so surprising when one realizes that most serial-killers are (1) created for purposes of black-world statecraft, and (2) do not act alone.

Read the book Programmed to Kill: The Politics of Serial Murder by David McGowan (Lincoln, Neb.: iUniverse, Inc., 2004). The book concerns high-level child prostitution, pedophile and snuff-film rings, drug networks, intergenerational occultism, ritualistic human sacrifice, and the organizations behind the phenomena of serial murder. These are intelligence operations used to compromise politicians, businessmen, academics, media personalities, etc.; used for assassination; and used to create a more totalitarian society by inducing societal fear via mayhem. It's thoroughly documented with major-media news articles and government records. The book is definitely one of the most important works ever written in terms of understanding the world we live in.

So Russel Williams was known as Russ Sovka until he left university... after his stint at the allegedly abuse-plagued Upper Canada College.

-----------------

By 1980, Russ was in Toronto, enrolled as a boarding student at Upper Canada College, a tony private boys school that caters to the city's elite.

The school, founded in 1829, has produced six lieutenant-governors, seven chief justices and three premiers. Another 24 have been named Rhodes Scholars, 10 are Olympic medallists and 40 have been inducted into the Order of Canada.

Modelled on the British public school, UCC regularly faced accusations of racial bias and sexism until the 1970s, when it began to recruit students from visible minorities and offer assistance to the less affluent.

Beginning in 1998, allegations of sexual abuse by teachers began surfacing, including some that occurred while Russ Sovka was at the school. A number led to criminal convictions.-----------------

OTTAWA — If the experiences of our formative years mould our character as adults, what are we to make of the life of Col. Russell Williams?

For the "bright, shining star" of the Canadian Forces, now facing devastating charges of murder and sexual assault, that life was a blend of instability and privilege, alternately exotic and mundane.

It was a life of shifting identities and high achievement, one that improbably coupled a very public career with intense personal privacy.

No wonder Random House has already announced the fall release of a book on his life.

Born in 1963, Williams was not yet five when his British parents left the English Midlands for a new life in one of Canada's most remarkable communities.

Deep River, carved out of the eastern Ontario wilderness 180 kilometres northwest of Ottawa by the federal government in 1945, was an offshoot of Canada's entry into the nuclear age.

Built to accommodate the families of scientists and technicians who worked at the nearby Chalk River Nuclear Research Laboratories, the planned town was like no other in the country.

A 1958 story in Maclean's magazine by a young Peter C. Newman described Deep River as a "utopian attempt to create a happy environment where all is ordered for the best."

An affluent, intellectual oasis plunked down in a rural area where most struggled to make a living, it had one of the country's highest ratios of PhDs per capita — 130 in a population of 5,000 in 1971. Crime and unemployment were all but unknown. Local stores stocked caviar and designer-copy clothes. The Strand Theatre screened the best French, Italian, Swedish and Russian films.

To overcome their boredom and isolation, residents threw themselves into planned fun. Nearly 70 clubs offered outlets for everything from glass blowing to fencing. The town's yacht, golf and curling clubs were most popular, each with hundreds of members.

Though seemingly idyllic, this life was oppressive to some. It was, they felt, too perfect and regimented.

"The children are growing up in an artificial atmosphere — and it isn't only the children," one resident told Newman.

Some say Deep River was a repressed society, with sharp class divisions imported by its many British residents. Marital stress was common.

Williams landed in this insular community when his father took a job as a metallurgist in Chalk River.

With his mother and younger brother, Harvey, they lived in a duplex purchased in March 1968.

David Ross, 55, who grew up in Deep River, remembers Williams' father — his first name was Cedric, but he went by his second name, David — as a very proper, handsome man who resembled Robert Redford. His wife, Christine, a physiotherapist, was tall with a good figure and long dark hair — "the best-looking woman in Deep River," according to Robert Hosbons, a metallurgist who moved to the town from Britain in 1967.

They settled into their new home, joining the Deep River Yacht & Tennis Club, where David raced sailboats and his wife played tennis.

It's unclear what role, if any, the atmosphere of Deep River played, but it didn't take long for the Williams' marriage to collapse.

The couple split in May 1970, and Christine transferred ownership of the family home to her husband.

David Williams stayed on in Deep River for another 10 months. But his wife and her two sons moved to Scarborough, Ont., where she married an eminent nuclear scientist, Jerry Sovka.

One of three sons of Czech immigrants, Sovka grew up on farms in Alberta, but spurned agriculture and the lure of oil for the emerging science of nuclear technology.

Sovka accepted a scholarship from the University of Birmingham in England, where it's believed he first met Christine Williams.

Afterward, he returned to take a job with Atomic Energy Canada Ltd., and helped design early Candu nuclear plants.

With divorce and remarriage came new identities. His mother began to be known by her second name, Nonie, and Williams adopted his stepfather's surname. Henceforth, he would be known as Russ Sovka.

The family settled into a house near the Scarborough Bluffs, overlooking Lake Ontario.

For Russ Sovka, it was a period of relative stability. He delivered the Globe and Mail and learned to play the piano, and later the trumpet.

Music, especially jazz, was a passion, and he excelled at it. In his first year at Birchmount Park Collegiate in Scarborough, he played trumpet in the junior, intermediate and senior bands.

A yearbook picture from 1978 shows a handsome youth with longish hair swept left-to-right across his forehead.

By the late 1970s, Jerry Sovka was on the move again, this time to South Korea, where he spent four years overseeing the construction of a Candu reactor.

If Russ accompanied the family to South Korea, he didn't stay for long.

By 1980, Russ was in Toronto, enrolled as a boarding student at Upper Canada College, a tony private boys school that caters to the city's elite.

The school, founded in 1829, has produced six lieutenant-governors, seven chief justices and three premiers. Another 24 have been named Rhodes Scholars, 10 are Olympic medallists and 40 have been inducted into the Order of Canada.

Modelled on the British public school, UCC regularly faced accusations of racial bias and sexism until the 1970s, when it began to recruit students from visible minorities and offer assistance to the less affluent.

Beginning in 1998, allegations of sexual abuse by teachers began surfacing, including some that occurred while Russ Sovka was at the school. A number led to criminal convictions.

By all accounts, Russ Sovka did well at UCC. He's remembered as a hard-working, diligent student, though not one with a particularly high profile. In his final year, he was elected a prefect in his boarding house, Wedd's.

Music remained his greatest passion, and he played trumpet in the school band. His graduation message in the 1982 UCC yearbook quoted Louis Armstrong: "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know."

After high school, young Sovka studied politics and economics at the University of Toronto's Scarborough campus.

He also took flying lessons at Buttonville Airport, north of the city.

After graduating from university in 1987, Sovka reverted to his birth name of Williams and enrolled in the Canadian Armed Forces.

It was perhaps a surprising choice for a university graduate whose parents were both professionals.

But Williams was a natural flyer; so accomplished, in fact, that after earning his wings in 1990, his first job was instructing pilots in CT-134 Beech Musketeer aircraft at the Forces' flying school in Portage la Prairie, Man.

It was there that he met and married his wife, Mary Elizabeth Harriman, in 1991.

Harriman is now the respected associate director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

In the Armed Forces, Williams' career trajectory was relentlessly upward.

In the 1990s, there were postings to 434 Combat Squadron in Shearwater, N.S., and 412 Transport Squadron in Ottawa, where passengers on his CC144 Challenger jet included the prime minister and governor general.

He and his wife bought a house in the community of Orleans, near Ottawa, where they lived for about 15 years before moving to a house in the capital city's central Westboro area last December.

Neighbours in Orleans share the general astonishment at Williams' arrest.

He and his wife were "an absolutely fantastic and wonderful couple," said Shirley Fraser, who met them when they first moved to the area.

"I would suspect the Pope before I would suspect Russ," declared George White, another neighbour.

By 1999, Williams had been promoted to major and spent four years in the offices of the Director General Military Careers, where he served as the multi-engine pilot career manager.

Life, it seemed, was good. But life can be fickle, as well.

In 2001, his mother divorced her second husband, sparking a rift in the family that continues to fester.

Williams' brother, Harvey, now a doctor in Bowmanville, Ont., said the divorce led Williams to cut ties with his mother and brother. The two reached out a couple of years ago, hoping to repair the family rift, but have had only minimal contact with Williams since.

In 2003, Williams spent a year in Kingston, earning a master of defence studies from the Royal Military College.

His 55-page master's thesis supported pre-emptive war in Iraq, arguing that it can be "an effective tool for building lasting world peace."

By then, he had clearly been selected for rapid advancement.

"He was what we call a streamer," said a ranking military officer who didn't want to be named. "He was getting groomed, fast-tracked."

After spending a year at Royal Military College, Williams was promoted to lieutenant-colonel and appointed commanding officer of 437 Transport Squadron in Trenton.

In 2005, he served six months as commanding officer, theatre support element, at Camp Mirage, a secretive Canadian Forces base in the desert south of Dubai.

The logistics base, whose very existence the Canadian Forces won't confirm, supports Canadian Forces operations in Afghanistan.

Around this time, Williams and his wife bought a second home, a bungalow on the shores of Lake Stuco near Tweed, Ont., a sleepy community about 40 kilometres north of Belleville.

The two sexual assaults that Williams is charged with occurred last fall in houses on the same lake.

In both cases, the attacker broke into the houses in the dead of night, blindfolded and tied his victims naked to chairs, then assaulted and photographed them.

Meanwhile, Williams' career continued to advance.

After three years at the directorate of air requirements, he spent the early months of last year learning French at the Canadian Forces language school in Gatineau, Que. — a sure sign of someone ticketed for a position in the most senior ranks.

That assessment was confirmed when, in July 2009, Williams was appointed commander of 8 Wing at Canadian Forces Base Trenton, Canada's largest airbase with 3,500 military and civilian staff.

He had risen so far and so fast because he was an impressive soldier, dedicated, hard-working and intelligent.

Yet he did so while revealing surprisingly little of himself.

"A hard guy to get to know," Quinte West Mayor John Williams told the National Post.

The mayor met weekly with Williams after his appointment at CFB Trenton.

"He was very much reserved. He just wasn't a person you would feel warm about."

Police say that after his arrest on Sunday, Williams told them where they could find incriminating evidence in his Ottawa home.

On Monday, he led police to the body of Jessica Lloyd, one of two women he's accused of killing.

With files from Kristy Nease, Citizen staff, and Adrian Humphreys, National Post

No one should be surprised when successful people in high-ranking positions become suspects in violent sex crimes, says a leading psychiatric expert in the field.

"I've seen a lot of cases similar (to this)," Dr. Bill Marshall said. He was commenting on the arrest of Col. Russell Williams, former commander at CFB Trenton, charged with the murders of Jessica Lloyd, 27, of Belleville, and Marie-France Comeau, 37, of Brighton.

"I suppose his position in society and the military is ... statistically unusual (but) I've treated people from every imaginable walk of life," Marshall said. Violent sex offenders, said Marshall, are "a total mixture. They fit no specified profile at all."

In addition to killing Lloyd, who went missing in mid-January, and Comeau, a corporal who worked at the air base and found murdered in nearby Brighton in November, Williams is also charged with two sexual assaults committed during home invasions in the Belleville area. Both female victims of those attacks survived.

Marshall has spent four decades interviewing, diagnosing and treating violent sex offenders. He heads Rockwood Psychological Services in Kingston, has treatment contracts in local jails and prisons, and is emeritus professor of psychology and psychiatry at Queen's University.

Marshall said violent sexual behaviour starts with fantasies, which over time begin to seem less bizarre to the point where a man may start acting them out. If he doesn't get caught, and he likes the feeling, the incidents will be repeated.

"Then it's not enough. You need to do more. It keeps ramping up," Marshall said. If the allegations in Trenton prove true, he said, the two women who were assaulted and lived may have been lucky. Marshall said news reports describing the Trenton incidents indicate that "this has a ritualistic aspect to it and a serial offender aspect to it."

That kind of profile, he said, helped police clue into a "particular style of behaviour." "It's usually quite ritualized. That gives police a handle to go back to various jurisdictions where this guy has been operating." Discovering why someone becomes a serial killer only comes out after extensive probing, Marshall said.

Logged

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Martin Luther King, Jr.

But based on where the ex-8 Wing commander at CFB Trenton lived, investigators in Toronto, Manitoba and the Maritimes are prepared to reopen cold cases dating to the 1970s.

“We have had inquiries from different police services, but our focus is on the case before the courts,” Sgt. Kristine Rae, the OPP spokesman on the case near Canada’s largest military air base, told the Toronto Sun.

But Rae said “the OPP want to be methodical and detailed before we can compare our case with any other cases.”

The Toronto Police sexual crimes unit had 150 cold cases as of late 2008.

The force does not expect to be called until OPP experts develop the accused man’s profile and understand the methods used in the alleged crimes.

But with the national DNA databank created only in 2000, and Toronto’s sex crimes unit not investigating break-ins of women’s homes unless there was intercourse, some old cases were never identified as having sexual motives, a retired investigator said.

There are several unsolved sex murders stemming from the 1980s.

They include Margaret McWilliams in 1987, Christine Prince in 1982, plus Erin Gilmour and Susan Tice. DNA proved their murders in 1983 were committed by the same unknown man.

Based on profiling of sex offenders developed over several decades in North America, police expect some Toronto cases will bear enough similarities to those Williams is accused of to warrant re-examination.

During the 1970s, Russell’s family moved into a Birchmount Ave.-Kingston Rd. house in Scarborough.

Russell and his younger brother, Harvey — now a Bowmanville doctor — took the name of their then-stepfather, Jerry Sovka, who has since divorced their mom, Nonie, and lives in France.

The brothers resumed using the last name of their father, David Williams.

Russell Williams, now 46, attended Birchmount Park Collegiate Institute, Upper Canada College, where he graduated in 1982, and the University of Toronto.

Until the small OPP Behavioural Science Analysis Service completes an exhaustive review of two murders and two sex assaults Col. Williams is accused of, officers elsewhere will not speculate on any possible links to cold cases.

“Toronto Police Service will be working with the OPP as required, to review unsolved cases in our jurisdiction,” Det. Brad Hoover of the Toronto Police sex crimes unit said.

“If required, this would require a thorough, methodical and detailed comparison that will take place over the coming months,” he said.

Hoover said the decision was made “to ensure the integrity of this multi- jurisdictional investigation, and the ensuing court process.”

I went to Upper Canada College from 1956-1967. I was never caned, never bullied (and never bullied anyone), never fought (except for tame little boxing matches), was uninterested in and hopeless at sports and got a good education. James FitzGerald was a year behind me for nine years. I struggle to remember him. Had he interviewed me for this book he would not have used the interview. My unexceptional experience would not have suited his agenda or his publishers. Maclean's entertainment writer Brian Johnson in a kind reference in the book calls me an eccentric. That is putting it a bit strong, but I do not think my contentment was unusual for either conventional or eccentric boys.

Old Boys is a compilation of edited transcripts of interviews. FitzGerald interviewed three hundred old boys of Upper Canada College and chose seventy one to include in the book. He chose whom to interview. The interviews are presented as monologues varying form about a page to about eleven pages in length. They have obviously been heavily cut. We are not told what questions were asked. Interview subjects did not approve the entries as printed; though at least one was actually submitted in writing. In a brief introduction FitzGerald traces his ancestors at the school back to the 1830's and recites clichés about the school's importance and character and briefly describes how he compiled the book. He does not explain why he undertook the massive labour.

The book has an obvious market in eight thousand living old boys, nine hundred present boys, present, past and prospective parents, staff and past staff, friends of old boys wondering what their experiences were, people interested in celebrities like Conrad Black and Robertson Davies, social critics and gossips. But shelves could be filled with warm recollections of proud and loyal old boys, if anyone could be bothered to compile them. Even to attract the interest of its ready made market this book required both celebrities and hints of scandal. As reward for his labours FitzGerald is able to offer on the dust jacket, Black and Davies, Ted Rogers and Michael Snow and a boy who endured violent sexual abuse and is now a gay priest dying of AIDS, a bisexual student working as a part-time male stripper while at the school and football played while high on LSD. The book has been widely and rather melodramatically reviewed. The Globe & Mail gave it two reviews. John Allemang, evidently a loyal and highly prejudiced old boy of University of Toronto Schools proclaimed it a "masterful oral history" and claimed that "anger, fear, humiliation and despair" filled the book. As U. T. S. faces full independence and the loss of its three million dollar a year provincial subsidy it may hope that its lower profile will spare it the attentions of a James FitzGerald amongst its old boys, or, since the 1970's, girls. Two weeks before Allemang's review Robert Fulford devoted his Globe column to Old Boys characterising it as "a kind of Little Book of Horror, a 369 page scream of pain".

Allemang and Fulford's reaction may be a common one and must be largely what FitzGerald intended. Many tales of canings and incompetent, sarcastic or uncomprehending teachers and bullying, delinquent or unhappy students support it. If FitzGerald had interviewed himself his story would likely have confirmed the impression, though even taking the book at face value it is false. But FitzGerald's labours on the book mark an ambivalent obsession. He had already written an unpublished book on his experience of the school. Ambivalence is reflected in many of what may be read as the most critical entries.

The last entry, from Daniel Borins (at the school from 1984 to 1993), complains of injustices but ends:I think I got an excellent education at UCC. I was allowed to excel in anything that interested me. There were almost limitless possibilities. But paradoxically, at some point, you always had to give in and conform to the ideology of the school. All the time I was there, it was like, I hate this school, but I love it. I want to stay, because I want to see if it can change.

Avi Lewis, son of former Ontario NDP leader Stephen Lewis and Michele Landsberg, whose sending him to the prep in 1976 led to their being predictably teased, shows a more self-conscious ambivalence. His entry ends:I learned a lot about the world in my three and a half years at UCC - a world which I lament, and which I will spend my life trying to change.Good socialist dynast, he sounds like one of his mother's columns describinga place where there was an absolute intolerance for any variation from a norm which is mythological and destructive in the extreme.But he went to the school because his public school seemed so inadequate that he "was going slowly insane". And the move was successful.Academically, the school was an absolute flowering for me. The teachers were, with only a couple of exceptions, committed, creative, and supportive. They were joyful about learning and communicated it without barriers. It was really a revolution for me to be in a place where intellectual achievement and commitment were praised, regarded, and encouraged.He made the politic decision to go to Jarvis Collegiate for high school.My learning more or less stopped after UCC and resumed at university. Jarvis has a good reputation, but there's just no comparison with UCC.

II.About half the entries are on balance critical; perhaps ten have nothing good to say about the school. One or two simply simply tell a story like Alan "Monk" Marr's highly successful prank of turning up at the premiere of Richard Burton's Hamlet in 1964 as a "famous satirist and rock singer from New York". For the most part the entries from the most prominent old boys are complimentary. Conrad Black (1951-1959), who was expelled for stealing and selling exam papers in 1959 is a predictable exception. But he is not as hard on the school as he was in his autobiography A Life in Progress: "I think it's a good school and I wish it well." He develops such a careful and detailed special pleading in extenuation of his theft that despite his disclaimers it for the first time occurred to me that he regrets having had to leave. But such a precocious ego would not likely have been happy at any school.

Much criticism simply reflects the left wing or politically correct ideologies of some old boys demonstrating the varied and unpredictable intellectual development of boys who pass through the school. A few years after leaving the school in 1963 Wally Seccombe took a "classic New Left" turning becoming at one stage a comrade of the young Judy Rebick in a revolutionary Marxist group. I remember reading at the time his formulaic article on "Housework under Capitalism" in the January/February 1974 number of the New Left Review. I decided me not to renew my subscription. Now a sociology professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Seccombe gives the school a standard post-Marxist treatment. But he too is ambivalent. Going back very reluctantly for a twenty five year reunion in 1988 he was effusively greeted by retired principal, Patrick Johnson, who died in December 1994: "The school was meant to produce more Wally Seccombes. We have produced too many stockbrokers". His entry ends:It is a cliché that we repress painful and unpleasant experiences. But I was amazed to discover at the reunion how deeply I had forgotten, repressed or excluded the warm, deep, friend-for-life boyhood experiences that I had at UCC because of my own hardening ideological opposition to the school and all that it stood for. I had repressed the very best of what Upper Canada College meant to me. I had become so vigorous in my opposition to the school as a ruling-class institution that I had completely forgotten how happy I was there.

A lot of the criticism comes from old boys who had family troubles that would have made their childhoods unhappy in any event. FitzGerald would be among them. The first critic, the third old boy in the book, is Guy Purser (1919-1927). An only child, his mother "ran away with another man" when he was two. His father abandoned him to go to war in 1914 when he was six. Engagingly he says: "My father was a nut and my mother was a nut. You're looking at the son of a nut." His maternal grandfather paid to send him to Upper Canada. The ambition of the school to be "A Family Writ Large", the title of 1950's principal Cedric Sowby's memoirs, gives it a responsibility to boys from unhappy families, particularly when it takes them into boarding, and on much of the evidence of this book it often failed. But equally often it is blamed for unhappiness no school could have overcome.

Some of the more recent boys seem to have had altogether too good a time. Lincoln Caylor (1980-1987) claims to have spent much of his time drinking with a set that included John Turner's son David.I was sleeping through half my classes. It didn't matter because I seemed always to get about 65 per cent in my sleep. It bothered my dad that I wasn't putting out any effort, but we were having so much damn fun.As he says "UCC wasn't that strict in my time."

The entries regularly contradict each other. Tom Godwin, a British Columbia (1947-1955) cardiologist, says "I was better than the French teacher, I. K. Shearer, in French. That's how crappy his French was." Conrad Black, who should be a better judge of French, says "Shearer was an amusing guy in a way and he certainly knew French well." On issues like whether or not the school was repressive or authoritarian their are conflicting accounts. Chris Gilmour and his brother David, the novelist and CBC arts commentator, seem to be at odds on this. Chris (1957-1965) says "My basic grievance about the place is that it socialized me against my will as opposed to just letting me develop into whatever I am." David Gilmour, who was three years behind his brother, in FitzGerald's year as it happens, ran away from boarding, but after two months "wanted to go back to Upper Canada so badly that I could taste it..." He was let back and despite further delinquencies was allowed to finish his year. In his experience the school was "not afraid to endorse rebellious behaviour".

III.Who knows what to believe? FitzGerald makes a preemptive comment at the end of his introduction:The highly subjective nature of this book is based on the belief that human memory is fallible yet indispensable to understanding ourselves. My modus operandi rests on the premise that because an interview subject has chosen to remember an event in a certain way, the recollection is the truth for him. The fact that, ten years later, he may choose to remember it differently, or fail to remember it at all, is an unalterable fact of human psychology. While it was obviously impossible to verify the objective truth of every vignette or anecdote related in this book, every effort has been made to verify the authenticity of the salient historical events.

As the truth of most of what is said is generally known, if at all, only to the interview subjects, it could not be checked. But some errors that could have been checked and corrected have not been. Harry Wilson (1919-1922), father of Michael Wilson (1949-1955) and chairman of the board of governors of the school from 1962 to 1967, thinks his "awful portrait" by Alan Collier does not hang at the school. His grandson Geoffrey (1984-1986) says is does. It does. I checked. It's quite a good portrait. Guy Purser is recorded talking of studying piano with Ernest "Sykes". Could that be Seitz? Shortly afterwards Purser complains that Toronto Symphony ladies thought Ravel was a detergent. Peter B. Gooderham, before rambling on about how much money his grandfather gave away and how he was his favourite grandson, talks of a rifle company inspection by the governor general, Lord Beaverbrook. It was presumably Bessborough.

Accepted as a limited, subjective and biased presentation of school experience Old Boys has some value. That many people have been persuaded to talk so candidly is interesting. It is sometimes difficult to gauge the exact spirit in which they talk. Some entries read like prepared remarks. Other are more like something overheard in a bar. The entries are often rambling, confused and tedious and must seem particularly so to readers who do not know the people who are talking or who they are talking about.

As a basis for assessing the school and the experience of those who went there, however, the book is inadequate. There is no argument or, rather, there are dozens of contradictory and undeveloped arguments. As a measure of customer satisfaction it is highly misleading, though not so negative as reviewers claim, if read thoughtfully. In my second year at Trent University, Paul Weinzweig, a sociology lecturer, had his office next to my room at Champlain College. He was working on his Toronto doctoral thesis on Upper Canada. In January 1968 he was able to administer a 144 question survey to the whole upper (high) school. Five of the interview subjects in Old Boys and FitzGerald himself were there at the time and presumably answered the questionnaire. Of 462 responses 70% said Upper Canada was a "very good school for me", 25% said it was "a fairly good school for me" and 5% said it was "not the school for me".

Assessments may change with experience of life after school. But thousands of old boys have given money to the school. In 1994 1403 old boys gave the school $357,274. Thousands have sent their sons to the school. More would if they could afford it or their sons could get in. The common theory that being an old boy with money guarantees places for your sons at the school has never been true when competition for places was strong, as it has been now for decades. In any event, old boys rich and powerful enough to have influence to exert do not need the school to establish their sons.

A large block of old boys is simply indifferent do the school. The resentful, whom FitzGerald sought out, are a decided minority. Their experience cannot be dismissed, but it has to be placed in context. The majority who do not share their resentment cannot be dismissed on the basis that only unenlightened, incomplete human beings could have been content, a common implication in Old Boys.

Old Boys was only possible because the size, distinctiveness, independence and history of Upper Canada College make it a sufficiently definite community that people can attempt to talk about it at all. Public schools without corporate independence, with shorter histories, much larger and often more fluid student bodies and larger staff and administration are too amorphous to get the kind of treatment Upper Canada gets in Old Boys. Many people have hated their high schools and found incompetent or nasty teachers and unjust administration there. Corporal punishment survived longer in some public systems than it did at Upper Canada. Private school education is so marginal in Canada that anyone unhappy in it is always conscious that there is an alternative in a public high school and can blame his private school for his unhappiness. Anyone unhappy in a public high school is more likely to blame "the system" and react in a generalised generational rebellion in which his school is not specifically targeted. Many of the critics in Old Boys, whether because of family problems or simple adolescence would likely have been unhappy wherever they had gone to school. But they blame the school because that was the one thing that could have been changed. They had to have a family, for good or ill, they had to be young, they had to go to school, but they did not have to go to Upper Canada College.

IV.Upper Canada's fame makes it a target, but its being a target adds to its fame. It it not quite a case of "any publicity is good publicity", but Old Boys and its reviews flatter the importance of the school and will add to its mystique. Upper Canada is not "Canada's most prestigious academic institution" as the dust jacket ludicrously claims. It does not produce the leaders of Canada. From two ministers in Mulroney's cabinet it is down to one M. P., John Godfrey, who defeated fellow old boy John Bosley. In 1957 John Porter in work for The Vertical Mosaic found twenty nine (sometimes misquoted as 29%) of the six hundred and eleven members of his Canadian born economic elite were old boys. Under 5 % is not, however, an overwhelming presence and in the larger and more fluid business world of the 1990's Upper Canada's representation is probably down to about 2%.

More interesting but more difficult to assess are the cultural or intellectual leaders. Other Losses author James Bacque (1936-1947) says "Certainly Upper Canada has produced a number of writers and artists out of all proportion to the general population. On the other hand, there are fewer than one might expect, given the advantages." The comments of such figures are as mixed as the whole book but on balance more complimentary. Robertson Davies (1928-1932) is a "whole hearted supporter of the UCC system." The communist historian Stanley Ryerson (1919-29), though naturally critical of such an establishment institution in itself, was a happy boarder. He traces his development into a communist to friends at the school and a French master, Owen Classey, who had been H. G. Wells' childrens' tutor and "conveyed an element of the Fabian socialist approach which questioned the old established fiats." Michael Snow (1942-1948) was not happy at the school but does not blame it. He won the art prize and went to the Ontario College of Art because of it. It might have happened at any school. But it did happen at Upper Canada College, sometimes condemned as philistine.

Upper Canada has not played a major role in national life. It is no Eton. Canada has no aristocracy and consequently no school for them. Upper Canada always was and remains a school for affluent middle class Toronto. When that constituted a community Upper Canada had the virtue of being a community school when there was some consensus on common values. Today middle class Toronto is much bigger than it was and the school's natural community has broken down. It draws its boys from a much wider and more diverse market.

The school has always had to compete with the free public schools and other fee paying schools and the numbers of the latter have increased with the widespread disenchantment with public education. It has been through serious drops in enrolment. By 1916, under the unsatisfactory principalship of H. W. Auden, upper school enrolment had sunk to 113. Under W. L. Grant's historic principalship beginning in 1919 enrolment soared to over 400. Day boy fees could be raised from $120 to $200. When Sowby became principal in 1949 there were eighty vacancies out of 465 places in the upper school. When he left in 1965 there were over 500 in the upper school with strong competition for places and fees had risen from $400 to $1100 on their way to $12,500 now. The slumps were also periods of academic decline when admission standards all but disappeared and good teachers were hard to pay and keep. Entries for old boys from the 1940's reflect such a decline.

V.In the last twenty years the widening of its market, the intrusion of parents and relentless fundraising have in complex relation changed the school. Fundraising was intermittent through most of the school's history. A few munificent gifts from the Massey Foundation and rich old boys came without organised effort. The "emergency" in 1958 when the 1891 building was condemned and had to be evacuated overnight changed all that. A campaign was organised and the three million dollars required for a new building successfully raised. Most old boys were then asked for money for the first time since they had left the school. The structure then established was continued for a modest programme of annual giving but fundraising gradually became fully professionalised and relentless. In 1992 the school managed to raise a further fifteen million dollars for various additions.

Historically the school had often paid its teachers less than public schools. Its grounds had always been extensive and its buildings imposing but by the 1960's it risked falling behind the lavishly outfitted public high schools of a time when government deficits were not a problem. The reaction of the school was to make itself the best school money could by. Fees continued their escalation to an historic high in constant dollars. Fundraising became an essential part of what is now a fourteen million dollar a year business. Gradually the idea developed that in addition to selling its education for whatever the market could bear and drawing on the good will of old boys the prestige of the school could be sold to parents. From negligible amounts, giving by parents rose from the late 1970's until it now exceeds giving by old boys. In 1994 320 parents gave $535,749 and 192 past parents $76,547. Even a few grandparents have started giving money to the school. To encourage the others the names of parents who give are listed by grade in the school's annual reports.

Parallel with their generosity the parents have been involving themselves more and more in the school. Parents' attendance at the school used to be confined to entrance interviews, parents nights, attendance at plays, concerts and games and occasions of trouble. Now there is a parents' organisation busy with sales and volunteer work (by mothers) in the libraries and elsewhere. Their most telling initiative has been the preparation of class directories for parents "to facilitate contact between parents of boys in the same grade". These have facilitated "social parent network evenings" organised by grade. In the past parents would only hope that their sons would benefit from an Upper Canada education. Now the networks and prestige of the school are available to parents. Much of this must be of no interest to parents who only wanted to buy their sons a good education or who are old boys anyway. It complicates the work of the school, which is always trying to satisfy parents looking for very different things.

Some parents are looking for standards and discipline they fear are lacking in the public schools. Others are more interested in the prestige or the standards without the discipline or tradition. Some parents would want a strict dress code, even a uniform. Other object to such requirements as there are brooking no interference by the school with their sons' affectations. It is a common misconception that the school requires a uniform. While boys are required to have blazers for special occasions, it is a very long time since they regularly wore a uniform. A jacket and school tie has been all that has been required for most of the time covered by Old Boys and there is constant friction over issues like shoes, socks and hair length. Boys dress down at the end of each day, ostensibly for safety reasons, though private school girls and boys from the newer private schools in uniform can be seen all around town. Boys are now more indulged, not to say spoilt, by parents more likely to be rich than just affluent. Boys are more likely to be under pressure to get ahead, to seek admission to an American university, where a quarter of graduates now go. The book will not hurt the school. It will hurt some of those living who are mentioned. It may hurt some of the interview subjects who may never be so public again and may live to regret their participation. They are caught forever like the subjects of Michael Apted's Seven Up film series. Most of the people who will actually read the book will be able to set their own experience and knowledge of the personalities against what they read and will only have their impressions of the school confirmed. People who only know the school as a big name will from reviews and seeking out the more exciting bits have their prejudices confirmed or merely be diverted. If some potential parents attracted by the school's prestige are put off, there will be no harm to the school or their boys from that. The book cannot change much at the school. Much that was objected to, caning, boxing and the cadet battalion, are now long gone. The arguments for coeducation are stale and inconclusive. The out of town private schools have generally turned to it as the tradition of sending sons to board died out and enrolments declined. For Upper Canada the question must remain closed for the moment because of the impact it would have on the private girls schools. Separate education for girls still has considerable support. For the rest the criticisms are too confused or contradictory to provide an agenda. Judgment of Upper Canada is finally a political question. If elites and class must be destroyed institutions like Upper Canada must go down with them. If any cultural hegemony must be dissolved, so Upper Canada as it has been must disappear, even if there are to be multicultural, meritocratic elites. Weinzweig assessed Upper Canada, by the techniques of conventional 1950's American sociology, for its effectiveness in socialising an existing elite and transmitting what he rather romantically called aristocratic values. He found that it was highly effective. But he identified two trends that might threaten its effectiveness. One was generational alienation, which, writing at the end of the sixties, he saw as having the potential to undermine all educational institutions. Twenty five years on that threat seems remote, though echoes of the sixties can be picked up in comments of some of the most recent old boys. The other trend he called "the strengthening of democratic sentiment". The effects of this could be complex and he detected "a move to a more meritocratic ideology" in moves to improve academic facilities and raise formal teaching credentials. He wondered whether "increments in technical and specialized facilities [would] erode the aristocratic values of elitism, tradition and humanistic education." He noted the irony that general democratic concern with standards of education had broadened awareness of the option of private education and led to "increasing numbers of applications from middle and lower middle class families". There have always been families that made sacrifices to afford an Upper Canada education for their sons and there are probably more now than ever. Scholarships are too little to facilitate many admissions. On the other hand, the Upper Canada brand name, in an era when luxury brand names have had their strongest appeal, attracted an increasing number of boys from families that had little in common with the traditional private school constituency except money. To some extent these families may have been seeking integration into a traditional elite. But many will have bought an Upper Canada education much as they bought BMW's as the fruit and sign of their material success. The school has been prepared to deal with them in those terms. Disparities of wealth may remain or even increase. But the stable, bourgeois communities that Upper Canada and the other private schools served have been broken up in the more fluid and culturally various world of recent decades. Notwithstanding, Upper Canada's freedom to select its students and staff and relative freedom to control its curriculum make it possible for it to provide a traditional liberal education to the highest standards, to instil classic values and pass on Anglo-Canadian culture and to be a community in a way that most schools cannot. There is a demand for what the school can do and, with greater or lesser success from time to time, has done. But Upper Canada cannot appeal to everyone who can afford to pay and still be an effective integrating community. If it is not to become simply a posh educational supermarket, it will have to find its market niche. Such a strategy would involve some retrenchment. By now the momentum of the business may prevent such a repositioning.

Two large cube trucks were parked outside the Ottawa home of Col. Russell Williams Tuesday as provincial police continued to search the inside of the house as part of their investigation into the murders Williams is charged with committing.

The two unmarked trucks joined OPP cruisers that remained at the front and back of the home on Edison Avenue in Ottawa's Westboro neighbourhood. Police officers were seen carrying equipment from the trucks into the house.

Williams, 46, the former commander of the Trenton Canadian Forces base, has been charged with first-degree murder in the deaths of Jessica Lloyd, 27, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, 38.

Two large trucks were parked on Edison Avenue, a short distance from the front of Col. Russell Williams's house. (CBC) He was arrested on Feb. 7 and remains in custody. He also faces charges in connection with two sexual assaults in Tweed, Ont., a small community north of Belleville where Williams and his wife own a cottage.

Williams and his wife moved into the Westboro home last December. Police have also been searching the couple's cottage in Tweed.

Logged

"He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it." Martin Luther King, Jr.

Very interesting that Hollywood over the last 6 months has come out with two movies showing "evidence and body removal cleaning crews" as normal everyday businesses who are growing in popularity.

What a coincidence. Expect many more cleaning crew and evidence manufacturing jobs over the next few years.

There are just way too many skeletons that need to be disposed of.

Logged

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately